Frieder, the Urach baker and court baker of Count Eberhard im Barte, had fallen out of favor with the Count. He had lost the friendship and the goodwill of the Count through defamation.
He immediately ordered Frieder to the castle and said: "You are an ungrateful fellow. You achieved everything you wanted through me, and now you insult me! I say the death penalty! You will be hanged!" Frieder was first put in the dark prison of the old Urach castle, which stands on top of the rock that towers over the small town. Frieder's wife was also very desperate because she loved Frieder very much. She hurried into the castle and begged the Count's mercy for her husband.
Eberhard im Barte was not averse to showing mercy before justice. He knew that if he let Frieder hang, he would also have to forego his delicious pastries. So, since he was a good ruler, he had Frieder brought to the lower castle and said: "Just because I appreciate your art of baking. I want to give you another chance. If you invent a cake or a bread within three days, through which the sun shines three times and tastes better to me than anything I know, then you should be free!"
Frieder thanked him for the great favor and immediately got to work. But two valuable days passed without Frieder thinking of anything significant. He kneaded a lightly salted yeast dough on the third and last day because he knew the Count did not like sweets that much. He formed a noose and didn't know what to do next. While he was wiping the sweat from his forehead, his gaze fell on his wife; she crossed her arms over her chest and firmly resolved to see that Frieder did his job for her. Frieder tried to bring these entwined arms of his dear wife into his dough form. He wiggled and tinkered until he had it: a sausage, thicker in the middle, that was the body. The side ends are thinner; that should be the arms. He folded his thin arms over each other. Just as he saw it with his wife. The shape was as beautiful and ornate as you might expect it to be. Frieder was satisfied, and the sun could shine through the three openings that resulted if she wanted. Frieder made a big wood fire in the stove and tried to get it on the proper heat.
The cat had slept in its place by the stove all day. But when the oven got too hot for her, she jumped out of her corner and sprung onto the baking sheet holding the looped pieces of dough. The dough tumbled into a bucket of hot lye that the baker's wife had previously placed there. She wanted to use it to flavor fish and soup. The baker's wife scolded the cat. Frieder yelled at his wife.
Both distressed pulled the loops of dough out of the lye and picked up others from the ground. They tried to get all the parts back into shape as best they could. "I can just throw it away!" Frieder wailed. "Bake them all as they are!" His wife implored him. - Time is of the essence - They quickly sprinkled a few grains of coarse salt on it to decorate it. Both sat in front of the oven and waited silently and impatiently for the baking time to be over. They were both amazed when Frieder took out his biscuits with the big wooden shovel. The ones with the lye were wonderfully brown and cracked pale in the middle. The arms were crispy, the middle soft like an awakening.
Frieder hurried as fast as he could to the Count with the oven-warm pastries. The Count was sitting with a glass of Württemberg wine when Frieder handed him the pastries to try. It was hushed in the room. The Count ate in silence. His wife was also nibbling on the baked goods. But Frieder was on his knees and felt that his heart and time stood still. Suddenly Count Eberhard jumped up and held the pastries against the window, through which a mild evening sun was shining. Indeed, the three openings in the pastry let the sunbeam fall through in three bundles. "What is the name of your pastry?" asked the Count quietly. “I don't know”, Frieder stammered. "I thought of my wife's dear arms and that she can no longer hug me when I'm dead! But since I always want to adore you, dear Count, you should choose the name!" The Count conferred with his wife, Princess Barbara. Indeed, they are poor, mused the Count aloud. And since the princess was well educated, she remembered the Latin word for little arms, namely -brachia-. She also mentioned the word -Brazula- the name for two entwined hands. "I can't say anything like that," Frieder dared to interject.
"Call the pastry Brazel,"
The Count added: "Tomorrow, I am expecting a whole basket full of Braze for Vespers in the castle!" Frieder was so excited that he didn't quite understand these words. He ran home and fell on his wife's neck, crying. "So you are saved!" she said. Frieder had made it. His life was saved! He never again made his friend and patron, the Count, mad and, like everyone in Urach and Württemberg, became a loyal subject.